A fine of cattle had been imposed on the chief, accompanied by a threat that if the fine was not paid by a certain day the kraal would be burnt down. The fine was not paid, and Major Forbes, with a band of men, rode out to execute the orders, borrowing two of our horses for the occasion. As we passed through the village the ashes of huts and granaries were still smouldering, broken pots and household goods lay around in wild confusion, and all the inhabitants had taken refuge at one of the neighbouring villages. As we passed by this it is needless to say we did not meet with an altogether cordial reception; we dismounted and went amongst them, asking in vain for beer, eggs, and fowls.
‘The Morunko had taken them all,’ they said, and they received our overtures of friendship with silent, and we thought rather ominous, contempt. Accordingly we remounted and rode off, and I think all [[300]]parties were relieved when we had put a little distance between us and the village. Since then I hear a solitary white man has been murdered in the Mazoe Valley. Luckily our force amounted to three, a number sufficient to overawe any Mashonaland village.
There are some nice-looking farms just started on the slopes of the hills here. Near there we met a wondrous long string of natives in single file, who avoided us and looked askance at us and our animals. Some day or another, when Fort Salisbury becomes a big place, and food supplies are needed, those who have pegged out farms in the Mazoe district will reap a fine profit from their agricultural produce, if I am not much mistaken. [[301]]
[1] Lecture before the Colonial Institute, April 12, 1892. [↑]
CHAPTER X
OUR EMBASSY TO THE CHIEF ’MTOKO
There is always a charm to us connected with the investigation of a country the name of which conveys nothing to anybody, and which is a blank on the map. This, I think, was one of the chief incentives to us to accept the diplomatic post of presenting a gift of forty pounds’ worth of goods from the Chartered Company to the chief ’Mtoko.
We gathered that ’Mtoko was a powerful chief, dreaded by the natives, whose country lay about 120 miles to the north-east of Fort Salisbury; that he ruled over a large and almost unknown district reaching on the west to the territories under the influence of the Portuguese satellite Gouveia; and that his father, who had lately died, had entered into a treaty with the Chartered Company which gave them paramount influence, but that the present chief and his subjects, who were reported to have customs of an exceedingly primitive order, had as yet had no official dealings with the Company. This was about all the information we could gather. [[302]]